Mike was sitting on the floor with Sean when the doorbell rang. He got up and carried the baby to the door. Three month old Sean watched his father's face with interest. His attention was diverted when Mike opened the door and Tom hurtled through, wrapping his arms around Mike's legs. "Unna My!"

"Hey, Tom...What's up, buddy?"

Alex stepped through the doorway with Molly and closed the door. Mike hitched a finger over his shoulder. "Carolyn's in the kitchen."

Mike sat back down in the middle of the living room floor and Tom crawled into his lap beside Sean. He rested his head against Mike and said, "Maga an' Dada bye-bye. No Gamma."

Carolyn had told him what had transpired the day before at Carmel Ridge after she talked to Alex. He was worried about Bobby. "They'll be home soon, buddy. In the meantime you can play with Sean and me."

He gently laid Sean on the floor in front of him and poked Tom's belly until he giggled. By the time Carolyn and Alex came out to sit on the couch, the little boy was laughing and asking to play pony.

Alex leaned toward Carolyn. "You're lucky," she said. "He relaxes and doesn't carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He can let go and just laugh, have fun."

Carolyn sighed. "He can also be five, which is why he gets along so well with the kids." She paused before going on, "You knew what you were getting into, Alex. Bobby bears his burdens heavily. He feels things a lot more deeply than Mike ever will."

"How is that a good thing? He lives a tortured life, even with the love of a family to support him. He can never just let things go. Ever. He lets the past torture him."

"How is he any different than he has ever been? He never could let anything go. Even Nicole Wallace still torments him. But you have to be content with the thought that you do bring him happiness, even if it tends to retreat from time to time. He's never going to change, and you have to either accept that, or let him go."

"And suppose I can't do either?"

Carolyn shrugged. "Then your life won't change. You will never be happy."

Alex sighed heavily as she cuddled her youngest daughter and watched Logan play on the floor with her son.

It wasn't long before Bobby's thoughts distracted him from the road and he just drove, not paying any attention to where he was driving. He did not return to the city.

His mind traveled over the course of his life and the profound negative impact his mother had on every aspect of it. Nothing he ever did was good enough. She had not approved of his career, of the care he provided, of the life he chose to live. He had done only one thing right in her eyes, only one thing she'd never berated him for: his children.

He had always been successful at keeping the darkest parts of her disease from touching his children, until now. Now the shadow of her disease had cast its darkness across the purest part of his life.

"Daddy?"

The little voice from the back seat drew him from his dark thoughts. He'd almost forgotten Maggie was with him. The sound of her voice refocused him. "What's wrong, baby?"

"Where are the lights?"

"What lights?"

She pointed to the darkness of the world beyond the car. "Outside. Where did the city go? When will we be home?"

He studied the road that stretched out in front of them, and he realized he had no idea where they were. He glanced at the time. Almost midnight. Alex was going to kill him. "Uhm, we're going to stop for gas."

"Did you call Mommy?"

"No."

She was quiet for a moment. "Can I call Mommy?"

"Wait until we stop."

He stopped at the first convenience store he came across and left Maggie in the car as he stepped out into the cold. A bitter wind was blowing and it was beginning to snow. He fueled the car then walked around to the passenger side. Helping Maggie out of the car, he held her hand as they crossed the parking lot to the store.

Once in the warmth of the building, he handed his phone to Maggie and asked, "Do you want something to eat?"

"Do they gots hot dogs?"

"And apple juice?"

She nodded as she opened the phone. "Yes, thank you."

He smiled at her, but the joy he normally felt when he was with her was not there. He got her a hot dog, squeezing a line of ketchup on it, and walked to the back of the store to grab a bottle of apple juice for her. She followed him, still trying to place a call to her mother. He got himself a large coffee and they went to the checkout. He wondered just how far from home he had inadvertently wandered.

The girl at the checkout handed Maggie a lollipop. Maggie smiled and said, "Thank you."

Bobby handed her a ten. She smiled as she handed him his change. He gave her a shy smile as he asked, "Uh, how far is it to Manhattan?"

"You still have a ways to go...maybe four or five hours."

He was afraid of that. He pointed down the road the way he was heading. "Down that way?"

"Yeah. You're about ten miles from 81. Take that south to 17..."

He nodded. "I know the way from there. Uh...81...we're just outside..."

"Syracuse...yeah. There's a big storm headed this way. It's just starting. Be careful out there, mister."

"I will."

"You heading home?"

He pulled his keys from his pocket and picked up the coffee cup from the counter. "Yes. Thanks, and have a good night."

He handed Maggie her juice and picked up her hot dog. She waved to the girl behind the counter and grasped her father's coat as they left the store. He set Maggie in her carseat and buckled her in, making sure the seatbelt was snug, then handed her the hot dog and popped the seal on her apple juice. It was snowing more heavily, and the wind had picked up.

Maggie held out his phone. "It's not working, Daddy."

He looked at the display. No signal. "You can try again in a little while, baby."

He kissed her forehead and closed the door. Walking around the car, he slid behind the wheel and rubbed his forehead. Damn. He sure knew how to screw up. He never did anything half-assed, as Mike was so fond of pointing out. The first thing he did after starting the Blazer was shift it into four-wheel drive. Then he pulled away from the pump and out onto the already snow-covered highway.

The car lay on its roof in the center of the deserted highway, already covered in three inches of snow. There wasn't much traffic along that stretch of highway so late at night in a driving snowstorm. Well camouflaged in the driving snow, the white car was all but invisible until it was too late.

As soon as he spotted it, he knew he was going too fast to stop in these conditions. Turning the wheel hard, he sent the car into a spin and it careened off the road. He managed to stop the spin, but it was too late. Directly in the path of the car, a huge oak tree loomed, and he couldn't avoid it. He hit it at sixty miles an hour.